This Blog

There are 100 million young people in the Middle East and North Africa. They are a force for change in a region at a crossroads. This blog is focused on ideas for tapping into this immense potential and meeting the aspirations for jobs, justice and dignity.

Can North Africa leapfrog together in work and welfare?

It was December 8, 2010, when I boarded a plane after a routine trip to Tunisia. There was nothing out of the ordinary that would have provided a clue as to the dramatic upheaval to come. The taxi drivers rarely spoke of politics, poverty was an untouchable topic of conversation, and YouTube was blocked. However, over the course of that winter, uprisings erupted throughout Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and beyond that called for greater social justice. Investment policies had privileged elites for too long. Social and labor policies had not been that effective at promoting inclusiveness. Each country has since struggled to maintain political stability while addressing demands for improving work and welfare, with mixed results.

Would a regional, coordinated approach to modernizing policies for better work and welfare help? A hotly debated issue, two reports that my colleagues and I worked on suggest that while one size does not fit all, there might be a case for closer regional dialogue in some critical areas.

The challenges of work, welfare and regional equity are equally pervasive elsewhere in the Maghreb. While each country will need to develop its own reform path, three areas emerge where closer regional dialogue may help them leapfrog more quickly.

First, the state-driven model to create employment has reached its limits, with a critical need now to redirect and better target investment. The challenge is not volume alone; where investments go matters. Redirecting investment to sectors in which low- and highly-skilled youth, females and hidden pockets of poverty can be integrated in the employment chain would be a positive step forward, such as industry, infrastructure and value-added agri-business. Public-private partnerships are one way to to do so, with incentives for firms and increased support to entrepreneurs to broaden the net for worker recruitment and investment in competitive skills development. Regional dialogue can motivate greater collective action.

Second, transforming the quality of work in the private sector would help unlock this investment potential. It is no wonder why the Maghreb continues to be one of the regions with the highest rate of public sector employment given its better working conditions. Modernized policies for contracting and social security financing would help reduce precarious informal work, where most of the poor and near-poor earn their living. To improve equity and transparency in how social benefits are allocated, accelerating the roll-out of nascent unified identification systems is vital. Such a transformation would also make it easier for firms to attract more highly-skilled workers, alleviating public sector employment queues throughout North Africa.

Finally, decentralizing investment programs across North Africa would allow for greater flexibility in responding to local needs, especially where cross-border economies are connected. Giving local private and public actors a greater role over how investment programs are developed is needed to capture local dimensions to vulnerability,where local labor force constraints vary. Doing so would allow programs to more readily connect semi- and low-skilled youth and women in remote regions to broader markets.

Global experience from Mexico to Indonesia has shown that leapfrogging is possible, where a regional lens can be a catalyst for change. Has the time come for the Maghreb and its neighbors in the Middle East and North Africa to take the same leap?